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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303641">Song Full Of Shards</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrimshapeofyoursmile/pseuds/thegrimshapeofyoursmile'>thegrimshapeofyoursmile</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To Build A Home [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Beyblade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dealing With Trauma, Found Family, Gen, Healing, M/M, Mentioned OCD, Moscow, Pre-Slash, Team Dynamics, honorable mention of Ivan‘s cat Rodya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:42:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,041</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303641</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrimshapeofyoursmile/pseuds/thegrimshapeofyoursmile</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A summer in Moscow where everything feels like freshly washed. Yuriy has very red hair, Sergei has flirtatious ambitions, Ivan has the prospect of independence, Kai has his own demons and Boris has no impulse control but a burning heart. Five episodes from the Life of Boris. Or something like that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Yuri Ivanov | Tala Valkov/Boris Kuznetsov | Bryan Kuznetsov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To Build A Home [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909858</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Song Full Of Shards</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is set in the summer before season three‘s World Championship. I headcanon them all a little older than they are in canon, so they are all about 18-ish here (except Ivan, who‘s a little younger).<br/>You don‘t have to read the first part of this series to understand this story, just roll with the fact that Ivan has a cat named Rodya and Yuriy has got some (fleetingly-mentioned) OCD where he washes his hands a little too often when he has the feeling that things get out of control.</p><p>370 Ruble = about 5 Euro = about 6 Dollar, by the way.</p><p>This is my very own translation of my fanfic that was uploaded with the title „Scherbenlied“ in German. You can find it <a href="https://www.animexx.de/fanfiction/autor/637923/392008/1278138/default/#complete">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Cut my hair,"Yuriy said. “I don't feel like being unhappy anymore."</p><p>Boris blinked. “I didn't know you could simply decide something like that. Why hasn't any of the fucking shrinks told me that before? That would have made everything so much easier."</p><p>“Honestly, they don't know anything. I'll just do it." </p><p>Yuriy laughed. It sounded a bit mad because Yuriy couldn't laugh like a normal person, but it was enough to almost make Boris’s heart pop out of his ribs.</p><p>It was a warm summer day in Moscow. In a few weeks they would take part in their first world championship since the abbey was dissolved. Kai would be here in two days, sleep in Yuriy's room and spend the rest of the summer preparing for the World Cup with them. There was something in the air this summer. Something was in the air even though he couldn’t exactly say what. Change, maybe, but a kind of change he could hopefully handle. Sunlight glittered on Moscow's tinny roofs and Boris looked at Yuriy's bare feet, then his collarbone where his shirt had slipped off his shoulder. The shirt actually belonged to Boris which explained why it was much too wide around Yuriy's shoulders because the redhead might have shot up a few centimeters, but Boris had gained significantly more shoulder width and muscle mass through boxing. Yuriy held a cup of tea in his hand because he feared neither death nor the devil and did not want to make do without black tea even at thirty-five degrees outside. His fingers had closed around it and there was a small cut on one of his knuckles from training that had become a little infected. Rodya, curled up on the window sill, purred softly when Yuriy gave him a light scratch. He and Yuriy usually liked to be around each other without acknowledging the other. It was a weird sort of bond, but then again both of them were weird in their own way.</p><p>"Well? Are you gonna cut them for me or not?" Yuriy asked.</p><p>Boris looked up from Yuriy's hand. He had started washing his hands more and more in the last few days again after a period where he had been doing rather well and Boris suspected that it had to do with the World Cup and the other teams, maybe only with Kai, but Yuriy didn't want to talk about it yet. Or maybe he wouldn‘t want to talk about it at all. Boris couldn't blame him. By now, chewing through his tantrums with his therapist every week was more exhausting than it seemed to help.</p><p>"I like it long," he said, which was true. Yuriy hadn't cut his hair and, accordingly, hadn't gelled it up since he had lost to Takao, and so it fell over his shoulder blades now. He had good hair, strong and thick, and it only curled a little at the ends when it was wet; otherwise it was very smooth. Except when Boris took the wrong brush and charged it with electricity, perhaps. He didn't want to cut Yuriy's hair.</p><p>Yuriy smiled. His smile was much softer than his laugh could ever be because it let a dimple appear on his cheek for a few seconds. It was exactly that moment where Boris realized that the heat had brought back the freckles on his arms. He only looked up from them again when Yuriy asked, "Will you cut it for me anyway?"</p><p>Yuriy had always trusted him with scissors. He had trusted him with scissors and with knives and needles and all other sharp objects without even blinking, without a single worry that Boris might hurt him. Sergei and Ivan were no different, but it had taken them a little longer. Boris sighed and wiped his forehead because it was warm and the open window with the mosquito screen in front of it didn't change that much.</p><p>"Sit down," he finally said and moved one of the kitchen chairs into a sunny spot, "I'll just go get my stuff."</p><p>When he returned with the necessary utensils, he saw that Yuriy had stuck his head under the tap and stopped in his tracks.</p><p>"If I’d known you wanted to drown yourself, I wouldn't have had to get all that stuff," he said.</p><p>Yuriy lifted his head and turned off the tap, then he grabbed a tea towel and rubbed his hair with it, at least until it was merely damp. Boris’s eyes followed the path of a rebellious drop of water that slipped down Yuriy's neck and disappeared into his shirt. When he looked up, he met Yuriy's amused look and remembered that Yuriy would sleep with him as long as Kai stayed with them.</p><p>"I thought you could work better when they're wet," he said.</p><p>Boris couldn't help but cackle at that. "That's what he said."</p><p>"So we're ten years old again," Yuriy stated with a roll of her eyes. He washed his hands, but then tore himself away from the sink before Boris could say anything, only to collapse on the chair instead.</p><p>Boris stepped up to him and let his hands rest on Yuriy's shoulders for a moment. Shortly before the World Cup and Kai's arrival in Moscow, his team leader was back in good physical shape thanks to a rigorous training and nutrition plan. He was still struggling to gain a lot of weight for some reason, but it was nothing like the first year after the abbey. Boris was very grateful for that. He picked up the tea towel that Yuriy had used earlier and put it around his shoulders with grandeur.</p><p>"Well, Yuriy Nikolaevich," Boris purred and grabbed the brush with one hand to hold the strands of red hair in the other so that he could brush it with careful strokes. "I haven't seen you for a long time!"</p><p>“Oh, you know how it is, Boris Petrovich,“ Yuriy took up the game without batting an eyelid, but with an exaggeratedly deep sigh, “with three women and one child you don't have much time for yourself."</p><p>Boris bit his lip to keep from laughing. Instead, he made the universally accepted, sympathetic noise of all hairdressers around the world, parted Yuriy's hair right in the middle and fanned it out. "Dear god, that sounds so stressful!“</p><p>"You’re telling me," Yuriy sighed again, "especially when the newest woman is so moody that I'll probably have to become an alcoholic to avoid becoming a murderer."</p><p>"I can beat him up a little," Boris promptly offered generously. It was Ivan's fault that he had to deal with Kai Hiwatari in a summer that tasted of change. But Ivan needed a break from blading because he didn't see any point in it for the moment and hadn't found pleasure again in it yet, so Yuriy had to find a solution. And Kai was better than some runaway lightweight who knew nothing and couldn't do anything, even if Boris hated the way Yuriy looked at Kai sometimes.</p><p>Yuriy seemed to be seriously considering the idea while Boris combed his hair and then picked up the scissors. "No, I think we can't afford that kind of PR," he finally said.</p><p>"Anyone who has dealt with Kai Hiwatari for more than five minutes will understand," Boris grumbled, then he said, "Keep your head straight, please."</p><p>Yuriy crossed his arms over his chest and straightened up in a high-held position. For a moment Boris was distracted by the line of his shoulders, then he started cutting. It was quiet for a while, except for the summer sounds that were heard through the window: laughing children, honking car drivers, traffic noise in a big city, a single, motivated bird, somewhere in the distance a barking dog and beneath them the neighbor from the second floor who leaned out to the balcony while loudly talking on his phone. Boris could hear Yuriy breathe, relaxed and calm. He ran his fingers through Yuriy's soft hair and concentrated on his task.</p><p>It would grow back again. Everything grew back again if you were patient enough.</p><p> </p><p>2.<br/>
“Okay, I get why <em>you're</em> here," Boris told Sergei while leaning on the painter's rod, the end of which he had sunk into the paint bucket. Boris liked to live dangerously. "You just can't say no. But why the hell am <em>I</em> here?"</p><p>"Boredom? Five minutes of kindness towards your neighbors? An opportunity for free beer?" Sergei wondered aloud, wiped the sweat from his bare chest and drank the last sip of beer from his can before he unerringly sank it into the trash can. "Or maybe the rest of your survival instinct has realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to murder Kai so that Yura has to deal with the problem of an incomplete team again.“</p><p>Boris made an indefinable sound and grumpily stared at the living room wall of their neighbor Irina Ivanovna which he was about to work on. He though of Kai who was working on nothing, except perhaps on how to gain Yuriy’s favor even more. The thought made him crack his knuckles with a grim expression.</p><p>"The guy hasn't done anything so far, what's your problem with him?" Sergei asked, shaking his head. "He's no more an asshole than anybody else."</p><p>"That's a blatant lie," Boris said firmly and reinstated the role. Behind him the radio, which may well date back to Stalinist times and had been dug up by Ivan in one of the second-hand stores in their street, was tinnily and cracklingly playing Oasis's <em>Don't Look Back In Anger</em>, as if to make fun of him. He turned an indignant look at it.</p><p>"All right, he behaved like an asshole last time, but then again we all did," Sergei pointed out, completely unfazed by Boris’s dark expression. "Besides, it can't be that bad - after all, you laughed at one of his jokes yesterday.“</p><p>"Just out of pity," Boris grumbled. He stopped, wiped his forehead and then put the roll down to pull the tank top over his head that was dropped on the paper-lined floor only seconds after.</p><p>"I would laugh at you now, but I lack motivation," Sergei said. "You know just as well as I do that Yuriy likes having someone around with whom he can argue passionately, no matter how pointless it is. And you have to admit that two idiots discussing whether Stalin or Mao was the greater dictator was quite amusing. And the discussion about the right rules of loading a dishwasher. At least for the first half hour."</p><p>"Yura cares about a lot of things and Kai should respect that," Boris promptly said. Then, a little unwillingly he added, "I would really like to know why Kai of all people is allowed to sleep in his room.“ Yura's room was sacred to him. He was reluctant to let anyone in, even Boris. And now Kai had made himself comfortable in it.</p><p>Sergei paused in his doing and looked at him with a frown. "I thought you knew why. But then again, your room is the farthest away from Yuriy’s."</p><p>Boris also stopped painting and furrowed his brow. "What the hell does that mean? Does he jerk off all the time?"</p><p>The frown on Sergei’s face deepened visibly and he seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, then he looked over his shoulder as if someone could overhear it and said, "He's screaming in his sleep. And then he usually doesn't sleep very much anymore."</p><p>Silence, only interrupted by the radio unfazingly droning on as they stared at each other. For once, Boris didn't know what to say. Kai wasn't one of them, not in his books anyway, but Kai was in many ways like them and Yuriy had known, had perhaps felt it through the strange connection they’d always had with each other. </p><p>"Borya," Sergei finally said quite gently and with an almost indulgent expression on his face, "sometimes it is more important to watch who Yuriy goes to in tough times than to watch whom he gives a safe space when it’s needed.“</p><p>Boris closed his eyes for a moment and told himself not to be silly. It was too hot to be silly, and come to think of it he was actually fed up with being angry, too. He was exhausted. He was done with all the drama and the ghosts that seemed to keep following them with patient, slow steps, no matter how quickly they tried to leave them behind. </p><p>"Let's get the walls finished, Sokrates," he finally said, "so you can stare at Irina Ivanovna's daughter when she brings us food.“<br/>
In an instant, Sergei reddened up to the roots of his hair. "I am not staring at her."</p><p>"You want her number. That's why we're really doing all this, after all," Boris said with a roll of his eyes, which caused Sergei, ears a rater unflattering shade of rosy, to start a monologue on the importance of neighborly solidarity. Since this year’s spring it had started to slowly dawn on all of them that girls didn't exist only as an abstract concept – well, it seemed to have slowly dawned on all of them except Yuriy at least, who, when they went out in one of Moscow’s various clubs, only hung out with them and seemed rather annoyed by offers of all kinds. But maybe he just had very high standards. It wasn’t as if he couldn't afford them. Boris had gained some experience by now, but the idea of going steady with a girl – or a boy? He wasn’t that picky about body parts, he’d discovered – was almost impossible. Where would a person like that fit into their team? And people from outside their little cluster seemed so ... fragile. Sergei and Ivan seemed to find it easier to accept the idea, but then again they hadn’t announced something like a steady relationship with anyone so far, either.</p><p>Boris wiped his forehead again, then once more started to paint, ignoring the splashes of paint that fell on his bare chest and the front of his Adidas sweatpants. From one minute to the next he had an inkling of what he would do with his life in the next ten hours - spontaneous, glorious, perfect, as most of his best ideas tended to be.</p><p>"When we're done here and you’ve got Katya's number," he said, "you'll go to the piercer with me.“</p><p>"You're insane," Sergei said with a laugh, but that wasn't exactly a no.</p><p> </p><p>3.<br/>
It was only with some difficulty that Boris resisted the urge to scratch his ear where four silver rings had been glinting for two days. Ivan shamelessly laughed at him as he registered Boris‘s hand movement and continued to dig in the unbelievably large, unbelievably dusty chest full of buttons that stood in a corner of the second-hand store they were currently visiting.</p><p>"Why are we here?" Boris wondered aloud, holding a pink brooch of abnormal ugliness in his hand, staring at it in disbelief for a while before a knife caught his attention. With a noise voicing his interest he approached the shelf where the knife sat on and pulled it out of the rest of the unsorted trinkets that the at least one-hundred-year-old owner of the store must have placed on the shelf at some point before he most likely had forgotten about it.</p><p>"I need new shoes and I refuse to support capitalism by buying overpriced new goods," Ivan said, adding after a pause, "Besides, there is air conditioning here.“</p><p>The air conditioning was an absolute killer argument on a day when there wasn't even a single damn sheep cloud over Moscow and sweat tended to pool in Boris’s neck as soon as he entered the streets, even if he stayed in the shadows.</p><p>"Why do you rummage through buttons when you're looking for shoes?" Boris asked uncomprehendingly and looked for a price tag on the knife. Then his eyes fell on a black sun hat with a wide brim on the other side and he wandered over, the knife still in his hand. "Ohh. We should take that one with us for Yuriy, then he might not get sunburned for a season. 370 rubles – that’s almost for free!"</p><p>"I told you so," Ivan replied with evident satisfaction, not answering Boris‘s question about the buttons, but only filling quite a decent amount of them into a big glass jar he had brought with him. Boris was not able to make out any system with which they had been picked – they all differed in size shape and color. Then the attempt at puzzling out Ivan’s weird sorting systems went out of the window when Ivan asked with no preamble at all, "What's it like to have Yuriy in your bed?"</p><p>Boris whipped his head around so quickly that he almost gouged his eye out on a boar tusk and stared at his team mate. "What the fuck? In my bed?"</p><p>Ivan stared back, the jar of buttons in one hand and an incredibly hideous painting of Tsar Nicholas II as Saint Bartholomew in the other. Then he very slowly raised both eyebrows and looked around demonstratively.</p><p>"Is there another Boris Petrovich Kuznetsov here? Stupid face, built like a brickwall?" he asked so loudly that a hipster girl on the other side of the store paused in her search of the best affordable fur jacket and looked at him in silent reproach. The old owner behind the cash register, however, did not look up from his newspaper for a second.</p><p>"I wonder if Volkov dropped you on your head a couple of times too often before he let you join the team," Boris wondered aloud.</p><p>Ivan stabbed him in the stomach with a corner of the holy image until he threateningly raised the knife. "He didn’t drop all of us, only you, dickhead. I once shared a hotel room with Yura and he kicked around. Should I take the painting?"</p><p>"Only if you want to die. He doesn't really kick. He just talks sometimes."</p><p>Immediately Ivan raised his head and looked at him with visible interest. "What does he say?"</p><p>"Yesterday he tried to assure me that he really isn't Pikachu for about fifteen minutes," Boris said and, encouraged by Ivan’s snort of amusement, continued, "Two days ago he had a one-sided argument with someone about how he's certainly not going to buy a twenty-hole perforator if he needs a forty-hole perforator.“</p><p>"If these are his biggest problems, then there’s nothing to worry about," Ivan noted and examined a stuffed fox with alarming interest.</p><p>Boris studied a silk scarf that reminded him of Kai, despite or perhaps because of its sixties pattern, and kept quiet about the other things Yuriy had told him. He also kept quiet about how Yuriy always fell asleep with a steep crease between his brows that Boris smoothed out with his thumb until it disappeared. He didn't say anything about the way Yuriy had murmured, <em>If stars are really just black light and can still shine, so can I</em> in his sleep. He also didn’t say anything about the way Yuriy had murmured, <em>Do you know that you're a song full of shards and I still love to sing along with you?</em> - which made no sense and yet it had caught Boris hard during the warm Moscow nights. He kept quiet about the fact that Yuriy might not kick anymore, but occasionally twitched like a dog that life had taught to be careful of punches. He didn't mention that Yuriy didn't need to talk and twitch to keep him up, staring wide awake into the darkness. For that, it was really enough to have his almost naked body on the blanket next to Boris, his fingertips resting gently on Boris's arm, his red hair spilling down on the pillow and on his shoulder like blood. </p><p>It had never been like that before. Or maybe it had always been like that, but he had only really noticed it that summer. </p><p>Boris nervously raised his hand to his pierced ear and rumbled as Ivan unerringly struck him on the knuckle with an umbrella tip before he got there.</p><p>"Don't get pierced if you can't live with the consequences," Ivan said, unimpressed by his facial expression, and then paused. "Shit, I should sell this to the fortune cookie company. That was brilliant."</p><p>"Maybe they'll include you in the total package, you'll be the right size," Boris teased and elegantly dodged a blow with an impressive walking cane. "Hey, let me see that one. Is there a sword in it?"</p><p>"Yura has forbidden you to use walking canes with swords in them," Ivan said promptly and inspected the stick while constantly twisting and turning so that Boris couldn't reach it. For a while they bounced around the narrow-spaced store like two Cossacks who had taken a wrong turn on their way to the kazachok, then Boris gave up when Ivan crawled under a clothes rack and cackled like a vicious goblin from between dusty uniforms.</p><p>"I wish you‘d come with us," Boris impulsively told the uniforms. The goblin laughter stopped. Behind him, the air conditioner faintly hummed and Boris glanced with mild interest at a heavy military coat that must have been from before the October Revolution and would doubtlessly fit Yuriy rather well. The hipster girl had found her new coat and left the store under the ringing of the rusty bell above the door. A gush of hot air came in from outside and hit Boris in the neck. He raised his hand to his ear, hit his chest with the flat of his hand instead to divert the impulse, and then stuck his hands in his trouser pockets to jangle a bit of change.</p><p>Ivan crawled out from underneath the uniforms, straightened up and knocked the dust off his shirt, then put his head back into his neck and fixed Boris with an indefinable look. "Is this about Kai? I get that, you know. Kai is an arrogant asshole with the strangest eating habits I've ever seen, I can hardly watch him every time he gets dinner with us."</p><p>"It's not about Kai," Boris said, irritated by the fact that someone finally seemed to agree with him.</p><p>Ivan kept eyeing him as if Boris was a particularly interesting test subject until he raised his eyebrows in irritation. Ivan shook his head, then looked around the store as if he was looking for something before directing his gaze back at Boris. "I'll be there when you get back."</p><p>"I know," Boris growled and inspected a shiny medal.</p><p>"Boris," Ivan said after a while, "For me it’s weird, too. But I don't want it to be weird to be alone somewhere, anymore. I want to be able to choose whether to stay or to go, you know? Besides, it's only a few weeks and Anna Nikolayevna is still there when something really happens.“</p><p>Boris had made his peace with their social worker, but that didn't mean that he saw her as an adequate replacement for the whole team. He snorted, wanted to scratch his ear and instead drove his fingers through his short hair. Ivan patted his arm and almost looked like a nice person for a moment when he smiled. Funny, Boris thought, that Ivan sometimes seemed to have become the most grown-up of them all.</p><p>"Let's buy the hat and the buttons," Ivan finally suggested, "and then we'll find a nice subway to spray. Best would be a wall in the shade so we don't get killed."</p><p>"Deal," said Boris and followed him to the cash register.</p><p> </p><p>4.<br/>
"Got one for me too?" Kai asked.</p><p>Boris turned his head to him as Kai stepped up to the railing of the roof where Boris had been squatting for a while. Yuriy had buried himself in all the rest of the paperwork for the World Cup, sporting a mood that was best avoided. Sergei was hanging out with Katya in the stairwell, Ivan was intently playing some sort of video game and Boris had used the moment to run up to the roof for a quick cigarette. Yuriy had generally become much more relaxed about alcohol and cigarettes since they were not exclusively athletes anymore. They all had to learn that their bodies were more than means to an end, in their case being perfect bladers; it was perhaps hardest for Yuriy, who had pushed himself for perfection the most of them all, but all of them slowly go there, even Yuriy. After Boris even had an unofficial medical confirmation that weed helped him with his particular brand of mental derangement, Yuriy had also accepted that (although only after a phenomenal argument). However, during the intensive training periods before and during a World Cup, he still became downright violent if they did anything that could potentially prevent them from achieving their best performance.</p><p>Kai did not seem to care. He merely patiently looked at Boris and had the nerve to look good only in sweatpants and white sneakers. As if he belonged here. As if he was one of them.</p><p>Boris wordlessly held the pack of cigarettes out to him.</p><p>Kai nodded thankfully at him and pulled out a cigarette, then leaned over to him to let Boris light his cigarette before he straightened his posture again, leaned against the railing and took a deep drag. Boris stared at him for a moment, then he turned his gaze back to Moscow. The day drew to a close, but somehow the city seemed to be unwilling to accept the night slowly creeping closer with soft steps because it was still much too warm, which was the reason why of them wore a shirt. He should have known that sooner or later Kai would come up to the roof. He’d always liked to be on top of things. But had it to be today of all days?</p><p>"You’ve got to be careful that they don't grow in," Kai suddenly said in his careful, lilting Russian. When Boris lifted his head, almost outraged at the other‘s unsolicited advice, Kai gestured with his cigarette to the silver rings in Boris's ear. "Happens quickly with ear piercings."</p><p>Boris narrowed his eyes. He knew that Kai had pierced his ears about two years ago, but he seemed to have decided to grow them out again since the holes were hardly visible anymore. Weak. "Don’t worry. I am not like you."</p><p>"What's that supposed to mean?"</p><p>Boris snorted and ashed over the railing. The grey flakes of ash flew towards the city and scattered in the wind. He took another puff from his cigarette, straightened his sunglasses and said, "Only that I take care of matters that are important to me.“</p><p>Kai made an indefinable sound that could be anything from silent acceptance to a duel challenge. Boris wondered if he could plead self-defense if he threw Kai over the railing now. Something was stopping him from giving in to the impulse as well. Maybe it was the black and blue shadows under Kai's eyes or something about his facial expression that somehow seemed so familiar to Boris.</p><p>"I hate Moscow," he said without being able to stop himself.</p><p>Kai kept looking at the city and shrugged. He leaned on the railing with his forearms and exhaled smoke. "I never wanted to come here again."</p><p>"Then why did you?"</p><p>Now Kai turned his head and examined him, then he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Why haven't you left yet?“</p><p>Boris snorted and didn’t reply. It was obvious anyway, even for someone like Kai, who didn't let himself be stopped by anything or anyone and preferred to run away from certain things until they came back to bite him in the ass - Kai, who owed loyalty only to himself and yet sometimes looked at Yuriy as if he wished he could hang the moon on him. Yeah, maybe Boris consistently felt as if his own skin was too tight for him, but he knew where he belonged and where he would always find support in case he lost his footing. Kai on the other hand ... well, who knew what was really going through his pretty head. Boris had never really understood him, but he understood very few people and had little patience for them. That was exactly what his therapist said he needed to work on, but really, Boris couldn’t tackle every issue at once.</p><p>Kai silently saluted him with his cigarette and then once more looked at the city whose tin roofs, construction sites and Kremlin onion domes were bathed in the red-golden light of the setting sun. They remained silent while their cigarettes burned down and sunlight was replaced by electric lighting, the city continuing to live with no regrets. Boris pushed himself off the railing and stretched, breathing deeply in and out with the coolness that the night brought. Moscow swallowed all the stars and constantly buried them underneath a cloud of fake light, but it made its own light and prospered in it, and perhaps that was what reconciled Boris with the city in the end.</p><p>He left his pack of cigarettes lying next to Kai when he stepped back into the stairwell.</p><p> </p><p>5.<br/>
"Leave it on," Yuriy said, "I like that song."</p><p>He had entered the room and closed the door behind him, and Boris had automatically reached for the radio button to turn it off. Now he lowered his hand again and leaned his back against the wall. Yuriy pulled the tank top over his head, slipped out of his tracksuit pants and shamelessly reached into Boris's closet to get one of his shirts. Boris shook his head and refocused on the cell phone that he had taken apart and was now trying to put back together. The aggression sat in his hands, he had been told, and it actually helped to do as much with them as possible.</p><p>Yuriy had pulled the fresh shirt over his head, turned off the light in the room regardless of Boris's reparation attempts, and came to sit next to him on the windowsill. The window sashes opened outward into the courtyard where some of the neighbors were sitting and drinking in a spontaneous little party under hastily hung-up fairy lights. Their laughter and murmuring reached even up to their floor, but it meant that despite the late hour no one complained about the droning radio, and really the sound was rather pleasant in Boris’s opinion. Yuriy's foot brushed against Boris' ankle as he made himself comfortable at the other end of the windowsill and peered out for a moment.</p><p>"We're all packed up," he then informed Boris and drove his fingers through his hair which looked a little damp, probably from a shower. "Tomorrow we're leaving."</p><p>"You're excited," Boris noted, reassembled the cell phone on under the dim shine of the courtyard lights and put it aside so he could take a look at Yuriy. He gave him a little smile that made his eyes brighter. People had started dancing in the courtyard and someone was singing very wrong lyrics of the song that was played down there. The fine hair on Yuriy's arms and legs, darker than his main hair, shimmered auburn like old copper pipes in the artificial light.</p><p>"Yeah," Yuriy simply said, "I'm excited.“</p><p>"But it..." Boris did not know how he wanted to end the sentence. <em>But it scares you,</em> was on the tip of his tongue, <em>but I know it makes you uneasy. But don't you remember their looks two years ago?</em> It was ridiculous. Yuriy didn't shy away from things just because they could potentially hurt him. Yuriy left nothing behind just because it had some ugly parts next to the beautiful ones if he considered it valuable. Yuriy struggled and doubted and yet he held on, held on so, so tightly when he believed something was worth it.</p><p>Now he shrugged and pressed his bare feet against Boris's knees; the shirt slipped off one of his shoulders and exposed his collarbone, but he merely left it as it was. </p><p>"We’re good, Boris," he said with unshakable conviction in his voice, "we deserve to be in this World Cup. No dirty tricks, just pure skill. I want to see what we are capable of, how far we can go, what’s possible for us. Aren't you at least a little bit curious?"</p><p>"Yes," Boris admitted and crossed his arms in front of his chest so that he wouldn't reach for Yuriy, who was so close to him and so bright, unlike last summer when things had been so much darker. He wanted to know how soft these leg hairs were. He wanted to know how deeply that coppery happy trail that started under Yuriy's navel and from which he had previously only seen flashes whenever Yuriy moved around, disappeared into his boxer shorts. There was a lot he wanted to know. The world championship and its possible findings just weren‘t on top of the list.</p><p>"And then?" he asked.</p><p>A red eyebrow twitched in the air. "And then?" Yuriy thought about that for a moment. Then he said, "If we win, we'll go visit Europe. By train."</p><p>"And if we don't win?"</p><p>"We'll win," Yuriy said with conviction, then blinked at him with bright, amused eyes. "And if we don't, we'll just go back home."</p><p>"And then what?“</p><p>"Now you're being deliberately difficult," Yuriy said and stretched. </p><p>Boris grinned and denied nothing. He watched Yuriy, who held his hand in front of his mouth while yawning widely, and then reached for the radio to finally turn it off. Another wave of uproarious laughter echoed up to them, then the sound dropped back down to a soft murmur and occasional clinks of glass. For a while they listened to the thousands of toasts that were invented by more and more people and became more and more absurd. A few lights in the surrounding apartments had gone out and the light from the courtyard had also started to dim down. In the darkness, the outline of Yuriy's body stood out in sharp corners and angles. Boris was almost startled when a hand landed on his naked knee and remained there as if it belonged right there. Yuriy very rarely initiated physical contact of any kind on his own. Boris thought of the foot that had grazed his ankle and wondered what was it about that particular Moscow summer that made everything feel freshly washed - so fresh that some parts just felt completely foreign.</p><p>"Borya," Yuriy said softly.</p><p>He took a deep breath, probably to say something else, but then he fell silent as Boris twined his fingers with his and simply held his hand before he could change his mind and not follow through with it. He was waiting for a defensive reaction, but Yuriy just lightly squeezed his fingers and looked out of the window. Stretched out before them, the sounds of a city that grew old and was reborn every few decades washed over them a city that was so good at shaking off dust and blood before moving on, unwavering and uninhibited, toward the future. Boris listened to it, this city that he hated and that was full of beings and things he loved, and he lost himself in its laughter, its artificial lights, its never-ending stream of voices and heartbeats and lives searching for meaning.</p><p>"Let's go to bed," Yuriy finally said so quietly as if he was revealing a secret, and Boris followed him as he had always followed him: with unwavering confidence and eyes blinded by the red sun he had looked at too often, and with hands that carried anger but also the possibility of creating beauty. He had been taught the former, but he wanted the latter, and that summer he felt that maybe he would actually be able to achieve that, to hold beauty in his scarred hands.</p><p>Yuriy did not let go of his hand all night long.</p>
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